Posted by David Virtue on 2007/10/21 18:50:00 (4275 reads)
REALIGNMENT, DEFIANCE MARK ANGLICAN COMMUNION'S PROGRESS
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
10/21/2007
The Anglican Communion is roiling from crisis to crisis as one Anglican province after another faces fleeing parishes, break-ups, endorsements of same-sex rites, and confusion at the very highest levels of the church over what it means to be Anglican.
In the American Episcopal Church, the ink was barely dry on a statement from the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council endorsing TEC's House of Bishops request for the curtailment of same-sex rites and future pansexual bishops, when Los Angeles Bishop J. Jon Bruno turned a blind eye allowing a same-sex couple's nuptials to be regularized in a cardinal parish in his diocese.
Undaunted by calls for constraint by the Archbishop of Canterbury, clergy and laity in the Diocese of California went even further and called on Mark Andrus, Bishop of California, to allow a trial use of three same-sex blessing rites in his diocese. "The Commission on Marriage and Blessing celebrates the intention of the Episcopal Diocese of California to support and bless both same-gender and heterosexual couples in godly relationship, while hoping for the day when 'marriage equality' will be the reality in our church and state," the group said in an introduction to the report.
Andrus himself, it should be pointed out, is not without unanswered questions in his own closet. When he was a priest in the diocese of PA, a scandal of an alleged sexual nature with another priest erupted, resulting in a confidentiality agreement being struck with then Bishop Allen Bartlett that nothing should be revealed. However, when Andrus was elected Suffragan Bishop of Alabama, the liberal dominated Standing Committee of the Diocese of PA refused to give its consent.
It isn't just the Episcopal Church that is showing its defiant face towards Canterbury. Two Canadian dioceses - Quebec and Montreal - went to bat last week announcing that they would permit the blessing of same sex unions, with Quebec getting the tacit approval of the new Canadian Primate Archbishop Fred Hiltz. To date none of these flagrant in-your-face acts has met with public condemnation from Lambeth Palace.
Even as liberal and revisionist dioceses showed their public face of defiance, orthodox cardinal parishes in the dioceses of Central Florida and Pittsburgh announced they are leaving the Episcopal Church with nine parishes in Central Florida telling Bishop John W. Howe they are calling it quits with TEC. While this comes as no big surprise, as talk of orthodox flight has been quietly talked about for several months, it poses a major headache for Howe, an Evangelical, who finds his loyalty to the institution challenged by his loyalty to the gospel, a gospel TEC no longer embraces. The story in this diocese is far from over. As many as 20 parishes could flee, making it the second largest orthodox flight from the Episcopal Church after the Diocese of Virginia - a diocese currently embroiled in multi-million dollar lawsuits over property ownership.
Even as orthodox parishes flee TEC, four dioceses - three Anglo-Catholic (Quincy, Ft. Worth and San Joaquin) and one evangelical (Pittsburgh) - will hold conventions to determine their own future in a post-Christian denomination known more for theological and moral innovation than for creedal and biblical adherence. This poses an ecclesiastical and legal nightmare for Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as she traverses the world mouthing peace and reconciliation with the Eucharist as ecclesiastical entertainment in one hand, and Millennium Development Goals to save the planet in the other. The lawyers, of course, will be the winners whether Mrs. Jefferts Schori wins or loses the rights to retain Episcopal properties. The court of public opinion will see this as a public relations disaster for the church, with secular liberals more convinced than ever that the church is part of the problem, not a part of the solution to providing peace on earth and goodwill to all persons of non-gender specific identities. The subtext in all this is that our sins of homophobia and racism can be washed away in the deep spiritual waters of the now much ballyhooed baptismal covenant. Fiat lux.
On the international scene, the slithering evil of pansexual behavior has now reached deep into the heart of Africa, causing the disintegration of the Anglo-Catholic Province of Central Africa. There has never been, in the history of the rise of Christianity in Africa, such a sight as African bishops vying over whether sodomy is good and right in the eyes of God. The dioceses of Harare and Manicaland have withdrawn from the province even as the pro-gay Bishop of Botswana, Trevor Mwamba wants the province to embrace Western modalities of sexual behavior. A breach, here in the heart of evangelical Anglican Africa, could spell disaster on this continent as it would allow the deep financial pockets of the American Episcopal Church and Trinity Church Wall Street to move in for the coup d'etat, lining the pockets of simpatico African bishops in the name of "mission" and the fight for global acceptance of homoerotic behavior now firmly entrenched in North American Anglicanism.
In England this past week, the Archbishop of Canterbury found himself facing a revolt from inside his own church. Church of England Evangelicals, fed up with having liberal bishops reign over them and the refusal of anybody to discipline recalcitrant revisionist bishops, announced that they had had enough. Some 1700 priests and parishes who belong to REFORM said they would now ordain their own clergy in an open revolt against their bishops, if the liberal drift continues. Coupled with this has been the long time cry of Forward in Faith Anglo-Catholics who have been bucking for some time for a third province with an all male clergy, who are equally fed up with the CofE's acceptance of women priests and the possibility of women bishops. REFORM told Dr. Rowan Williams that evangelicals would increasingly defy Church rules and their own bishops by parachuting in outsiders to carry out irregular ordinations of "orthodox" candidates.
BUT IN A MOVE that has distinct overtones of possible future schism through historical spin, Canon Gregory Cameron, the Deputy Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion, recently publicly distanced Anglicanism from Protestantism. In an article in the London-based Church Times, Cameron spoke of an Anglican "dialogue with the Protestant traditions" making it clear that he regarded Anglicanism as lying beyond the pale of Protestantism.
The distinguished Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, Dr. Alister McGrath took Cameron to task by ripping his interpretation of Anglican history saying that historians generally consider "Anglicanism" as one of the most remarkable and influential forms of Protestantism to emerge in England.
"From an historical perspective, the English national Church must be regarded as a Protestant variant - the 'Protestant Episcopal Church of England and Ireland', as state and parliamentary documents regularly describe it. And, as many readers will recall, the body which now prefers to describe itself as 'The Episcopal Church' was originally entitled 'The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.' (Indeed, this remains the Church's legal title)," wrote McGrath.
"We need to appreciate that the sixteenth-century Reformation was a complex phenomenon. The forms of Protestantism which emerged in the great imperial cities (such as Strasbourg), territories (such as Saxony) and nations (such as England or Sweden) had their own distinct characteristics. Some, for example, retained the episcopacy and a fixed liturgy; others discarded one or both. Yet each represented a local implementation of the Protestant agenda. From the reign of Edward VI onwards, English Church leaders began to use this term to refer to themselves, and see themselves as being connected with the great reforming movements and individuals on the continent of Europe."
McGrath blasted the ACC leader saying "Canon Cameron appears to belong to the revisionist school of thought which is trying to airbrush out Anglicanism's Protestant heritage and tradition. (The same agenda can be seen in the 1977 decision of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America to drop the word 'Protestant' from its name in common usage.)
It is an unwise strategy for two reasons. First, it is historically indefensible. Cameron may wish that Anglicanism was not Protestant; he cannot, however, rewrite history to suit his tastes. His form of revisionism has itself been revised, and found to be untenable. But, much more importantly, understanding Anglicanism's history allows us to appreciate what may be about to happen within the Anglican Communion, in the face of renewed tensions over issues of sexuality. To understand this point, we need to consider the Protestant concept of a 'denominational family'."
RECENTLY orthodox Anglicans meeting in Pittsburgh announced the formation of a new ecclesiastical structure which, in time, will no doubt lead to a new North American Anglican Province. When that happens, it will be interesting to see if Dr. Williams recognizes this group or chooses to ignore them, siding with the Episcopal Church as the sole legitimate representatives of Anglicanism in North America.
If he does not, one thing is for sure, there will be no reversal of the realignment currently underway in worldwide Anglicanism. Revisionist Anglicans across the communion will continue to act defiantly against Scripture, tradition and reason, pushing pansexuality and attempting to outlaw those whose consciences cannot accept women to the priesthood or episcopacy.
There is now no stopping the train of renewal and reformation for orthodox Anglicans across the world. It has left the station. The only thing left to consider is what the Anglican Communion will look like after the great schism has occurred and who the leaders will be.
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